Favorite lost local treats

Cafe Society
1

Just had some chocolate covered cherries and memories of one my favorite candies from the past came to mind.

In Hawaii, up until sometime in the 70’s, possibly early 80’s, we used to have Ed & Don’s macadamia nut “bars”. I put bars in quotes, because they weren’t like regular chocolate bars. There we six rectangles, ~1"x1 1/2", in a plastic tray. It was chopped up macadamia bits, probably the leftovers from the whole/half process in milk chocolate. Because of the bits, you got more nut per bite than a regular chocolate drop.

It cost 25 cents in the 60’s, when other chocolate bars were 10-15 cents, so buying it was a tough choice. It kept going up in price and shrinking over the years, to over $1, then disappeared. Competitor Hawaiian Host made their own bars in the 70’s, but were more expensive and not as tasty.

Another fave was coconut candy squares. AFAIK, this wasn’t made locally, but imported from China along with the more familiar coconut balls. Coconut balls are basically the inside of a Mounds in ball shape. Soft and chewy and RED! Always red! The coconut squares had the same red shredded coconut on the outside, but the middle was taffy like, but much firmer. If the candy was old, the middle would become hard and unchewable.

Goodie Goodie / Guri Guri. Somewhere between an ice cone (shave ice in Hawaii), soft serve ice cream and sherbert. https://fluxhawaii.com/tasaka-guri-guri/ AFAIK, the original Tasaka Guri Guri is still available in Maui, and there may be a shop on Oahu. And there’s a couple of brands in the ice cream section. But for me the real Goodie Goodie is from long gone Goodie-Goodie Drive Inn on King St. Honolulu. It was must stop before or after the local baseball games at the old Honolulu Stadium.

My sister worked there for a short time in the 60’s and I’d go with my Dad to pick her up at night. She’d sometimes bring home a pint or two, but it was never the same as getting straight from the counter, 10 or 15 cents for a small. Not too hard, not too soft and not too cold. Jussssst right! SIGH

2

Not local to me, but I regularly go to the Bay area, and I would always go to Ti Couz, the amazing Breton-style creperie in San Francisco, when it was still open. It closed in 2011, and I miss it every time I’m in the area.

3

When I was growing up, it with Ebinger’s chocolate blackout cake. My grandmother always brought one when she visited. It was a dark chocolate cake with chocolate pudding between layers, and the outer dark chocolate icing was covered with dark chocolate crumbs.

This is a modern attempt at making one.

They went out of business in 1972 and people still mourn the loss.

4

In Naples, NY, in the 1970’s, there was a restaurant that had the most amazing freshly-made donuts. Perfectly made and hot and filled up the whole plate. They opened at six in the morning and the donuts were always sold out by 7:00, so you had to get up early to get one, but they were worth it.

The restaurant closed for several months in the winter; I think without the tourists and the snowbirds* they’d have had a lot less business, plus which the owners may have been snowbirds themselves. The first week they reopened in the spring, I’d make sure to get up early enough to stop and get a donut for breakfast. One spring I got up early, went over there, sat down, ordered my donut . . . and they brought me an utterly standard mass-market grocery-store donut. Cold.

I sat there and looked at what was on my plate and said ‘What happened to the donuts?’ and was told ‘Oh, the person who used to make those doesn’t work here any more.’

The restaurant, last I looked, was still there. It continued without my ever showing up there for breakfast again, however.

(*it occurs to me that ‘snowbird’ may be a regionalism. In case it’s not obvious: people who spend the winter in Florida or other points south, and the summer up here or similar points north. They fly south at the first snow; though in practice many of them disappear earlier, around Labor Day.)